


cold inside

by december_blue



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Dialogue Light, Gen, Katara (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Pre-Canon, Trauma, no beta we die like jet, the death tag is for kya
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:29:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29658975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/december_blue/pseuds/december_blue
Summary: Katara is eight when she sees her mother's corpse.
Relationships: Hakoda & Katara (Avatar), Katara & Kya (Avatar)
Kudos: 8





	cold inside

**Author's Note:**

> title is from a song by Cage the Elephant

Katara is eight when she sees her mother's corpse.

There are many things she remembers from that day, but they feel disjointed, like fractured ice. The ash drifting like dead snow upon the tribe; the panic in her brother's eyes; the calm reassurance in her mother's. She remembers the last words Kya ever spoke to her— _go find your dad, sweetie. I'll handle this._ She doesn't remember where she found her father or what she said, but there's an image—a bolt of terror across his face, framed by black ashes. By the time they get back, the Fire Nation man is gone, and so is her mother.

Sokka doesn't see this. This stiff thing in her mother's shape, eyes open and blue, chest still. Hakoda's voice is hoarse as he tells her not to look. Katara takes her mother's hand, limp in its mitten. She must be cold, lying in this snow stained red.

The Fire Nation leaves. Katara watches the cruel-faced man who cut down her mother, and doesn't understand what he's saying. "Your waterbender is dead," he crows, and her father's grip is painful on her shoulder. Sokka looks blank, eyes fixed on the warship and boomerang clenched tightly in his fist.

"I'm not dead," she says to her father, afterwards. She's reached a blankness, and knows it must show on her face. Her father's expression twists in pain. When he gathers her into his arms, she can feel him trembling; the tremor passes through him into her, like a chill, and for the first time since she saw her mother's dead eyes, she cries.

The moon rises full that night and Katara feels its thrumming power in her veins, too late. The adults are still awake, grieving, tending to the wounded, but she slips past them easily, feet taking her from the temporary shelter back to their empty home. The injured take precedence over the dead, so her mother has only been lifted and placed in bed, gently, hands folded across her stomach. Her brown skin has gone grey. Her eyes are closed. Katara wonders what would have been different, if she had stayed when her mother told her to run.

She sits at her mother's bedside for a long while, tries and fails to imagine that Kya is only holding her breath, that any moment she'll rise and pull Katara into her arms and tell her she did a good job, running for her dad, that she got back just in time.

She doesn't remember untying the necklace, but she doesn't think she'll ever be able to forget the cold unnaturalness of her mother's skin. The pendant feels heavier against her collarbone than it did in her palm, like a weighted noose.

Hakoda sees it around her throat the next day.

**Author's Note:**

> me: first contribution to the fandom! i should write a cute gaang fic, something fluffy  
> also me: trauma


End file.
